This article is cool as we’ve used and liked the hot sauces from the folks at Amazon Sauce. Their Red and Green sauces are excellent. So good are they that we used them up in fairly short order and only have bottles left that are in our display collection. Maybe Giorgio will see this article and send us some more so we don’t have to go looking for them!

(This article is quoted, in part, from the online Houston Chronicle.)

Colombian pins his hopes on peppers
Plants offer an alternative for farmers who depend on coca

By JOHN OTIS
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle South America Bureau

BARRANQUILLA, COLOMBIA - Inspecting a plastic tub filled with green jalapeño peppers, Colombia’s hot sauce czar spotted a single overripe slice with a reddish hue.

“They all must be green,” Giorgio Araujo told workers at his food-processing plant as they tested a new product in the laboratory. “No red ones.”

When it comes to the pungent and the piquant, Araujo knows what he likes. Not only does he slather chili peppers on everything from his breakfast eggs to shrimp dinners, Araujo produces his own line of hot sauces and exports the products to the U.S., many through the Port of Houston.

Hundreds of Colombian farmers, who used to struggle growing cotton and corn, make a living raising chili peppers for Araujo. Now, the 43-year-old entrepreneur wants to set up a series of “chili pepper colleges” to help peasants who grow coca, the raw material for cocaine, switch to cayenne, habanero, jalapeño and tabasco peppers.

“I always think of John F. Kennedy’s words,” Araujo said as he wandered past 55-gallon drums of peppers soaking in brine. “Ask what you can do for your country.”

To view the rest of this article, click HERE for the source text.

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